The present invention relates generally to conductive elastomers and more particularly to a woven mesh interconnect.
Conductive elastomers are known in the art. A conductive elastomer typically comprises a non-conductive elastomeric material which has a plurality of conductive particles or flakes disposed therein. In operation, the conductive flakes or particles make an electrical connection between a device such as a packaged integrated circuit and a circuit board having electrically conductive pads or traces when the elastomer is placed between the device and the circuit board. The current carrying capacity of such an elastomer is small due to the resulting high resistance connection provided by the conductive particles of the elastomer. Further, the integrity of the connection varies from device to device since the concentration of conductive particles varies from contact to contact.
Some other conductive elastomers that are known are formed by encapsulating a plurality of conductive wires within an elastomeric material. These conductive elastomers are limited in the number of wires, the wire pitch and the number of rows of wires that can be used. These conductive elastomers also suffer from electrical and mechanical integrity problems. The wire in these elastomers require inherently high forces to assure electrical connection. Further, these wire elastomer designs exhibit a relatively large permanent deformation upon initial compression or once compressed they do not recover to the approximate initial starting height, which is referred to as compression set.
It would be desirable to have a flexible conductive elastomer which has a greater current carrying capacity as well as providing lower resistance connections and producing greater integrity of the connections.